Wonder Woman and her Wonderful Life: Happy Birthday Andrew!

Andrew's 3rd birthday was a big deal for a long time because Scott had the greatest idea ever. Andrew would rather play in the dirt than anything else in the world. His favorite spot is under our deck. It's beautiful with a nice wood wall and he can walk in under the stairs and it's wonderful...BECAUSE IT'S THE FOUNDATION THAT'S HOLDING UP OUR HOUSE!

Scott is a genius. He wanted to make a sandbox for Andrew. He bought the lumber and hardware and made plans. Andrew's birthday was on a Friday and we finally made some time on Tuesday night to build it. The girls watched from their window and it was as much fun to hear them guess what we were doing as it was to do it. We said nothing to any of them so it was 3 days of guessing the big surprise. Love that. There's an 8'x8' box in the back yard and it drives them crazy, in a really fun way.

On Monday I had begun the search for sand. What a joke. Every stone place in Michigan is now out of business. That 19% unemployment rate is NO joke. I found a guy on Craigslist dba "Dirt Cheap Delivery." He'll do it, but we're out of his delivery area so it's a pretty hefty price for the sand because of gas prices. I do some more research and even call Home Depot. For the amount of sand we need I can drive to HD and load the bags of sand into my own SuperBurban, make another trip to get the rest of it and unload it all myself OR I can call Dirt Cheap Delivery back and schedule the dump truck. Guess what happened next?

The box is built, but we still have to line it with the black sheets of weed block and it's Thursday night. And Scott has to work late. I get out there after I put the kids to bed and work until way after dark and way after the mosquitos eat me alive. Yes, I used repellant. My blood is 90% chocolate and 10% sugar. Who wouldn't want to eat me??? At about 10:30 PM it is too dark to work so Scott comes home and turns on the outside lights. We're too far from the house for that to help, but I keep going. He cuts the rest of the weed block while I nailed down the rest. And as he cut we discovered that the roll was about 6 feet short of finishing the whole box. At 11PM I drove to WalMart, praying all the way that they would have some. Finally I found it and did some more shopping. Way too much money later I check out and drive home, getting to bed at 2AM.

At 6 o'clock the next morning Scott goes to work and I go back out to the sandbox to finish the liner. Dirt Cheap Delivery is great, but we're a pretty small order. He couldn't give me a delivery time because any bigger order that came in would obviously take precedence. I had to finish before 8 AM no matter what. Well, Wonder Woman did it.

I don't remember the rest of the day (4 hours sleep???), but I do remember that we were coming back from somewhere when we passed our dump truck delivery guy on the drive back to the house. (The only time I've ever met another vehicle on that drive and it turns out to be a dump truck! Guess who pulled over into the alfalfa?)

Dirt Cheap Delivery gave us a deal on a little bit more sand than the box required and the guy was so good to work with. This is an endorsement. He's awesome. And this is our finished product.

Big enough that all five can play and not get in each others' way. Which is more than I can say for our entire house. Kudos to my Man of Wonder for his magical idea. Alex said, "I knew it was a sandbox!" Andrew is over the moon about it and is out there every day. He got a few extra sandbox toys for his birthday and when I am missing kitchen tools I walk out and find them there. We gotta do something about that.

Here are some other photos from his big day.